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New honey comb

Can I extract honey from new comb that was built on foundation and then turn around and use it for starting a new hive? Will the queen lay in it or ignore it? Do the worker bees have to modify it? When the bees know they are going to fill comb with honey do they build it a different size? Is there 3 different sizes of comb? Brood (worker), drone, and honeycomb. Obviously i'm a little confused, I think

Re: New honey comb

Coming as I do from foundationless (top bar...) hives, I can certainly attest to the astonishing speed with which a colony of honeybees can build a brand-new beautiful comb without anything except a single piece of wood to build upon.

I am also frankly a bit leery of the long-term wisdom of "helpfully" providing to one hive something that came from another, heretofore unrelated hive. It simply seems to me that this notion, which might "seem like a very kind and generous idea" to us humans, just might not actually be such a good idea after all. We are thereby creating a "vector" for pathogens and so-forth, which vector does not exist in nature. And, are we really "helping" our ever-so industrious sisters in so doing? Do they actually need what we have "helpfully" done? Quite frankly, (and: JM2CW) "I doubt." (That's my leaning-on the water-cooler opinion ... nothing more or less.)

Bees certainly do build comb-cells to different sizes for different purposes. One must presume that, given a well-intended "gift" of existing comb of a certain size, they will probably continue to apply it toward the same purpose. Therefore consider, if you do decide to bequeath upon them this "helpful" gift, also giving them some additional territory in which they can do whatever they like. (Then, observe what they actually do with it all.)

Re: New honey comb

Queens lay in comb that used to have honey it all of the time. Cells are varying sizes, not just three. I know that if a queen gets in my honey supers that most of the brood is worker brood, but there will also be some drone brood. My honey supers are drawn from foundation, so they mostly follow the foundation pattern.